Chicago Underground Quartet
Stringers & Struts
Aerophonic Records presents Stringers & Struts by Dave Rempis – alto/tenor/baritone saxophone, Jeff Parker – guitar, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten – bass, Jeremy Cunningham - drums. If you know Chicago jazz, you know the tendons beneath the surface run deep. This isn’t always apparent at first glance. Up above, it’s a broad-shouldered expanse where a multitude of players continue to weave specific sections on the tapestry of this ever-evolving art. And many of those sub-scenes have unique venues, audie…
Dimensional Stardust
Marfa TX-based multidisciplinary abstractivist Rob Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene, he’s written more than 400 compositions and is featured on more than 70 recordings (including International Anthem’s very first, IARC0001, "Alternate Moon Cycles"). He’s led or co-led many ensembles – including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet & Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortois…
Good Days
On May 13, 2000 the Chicago Underground Quartet played one of the most searing and transcendent sets of music I’ve ever witnessed, as part of the Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music. Cornetist Rob Mazurek, guitarist Jeff Parker, drummer Chad Taylor, and bassist Noel Kupersmith performed with a fiery singularity of purpose, ripping through its set like a bulldozer, albeit a machine marked by nuance and soulfulness. The following year the same line-up—which had previously made two alb…
The New Breed
Heavyweight old-style tip-on jacket with IARC obi strip and dome pattern inner-sleeve. Album insert includes production credits and vintage portraits of Jeff's father Ernie Parker. Best known as a multi-instrumental member of Tortoise and a pillar of the Chicago jazz and experimental music scene, Jeff Parker has been incomparably prolific over the last 20+ years while merely producing 5 albums as a “lead artist” (just 2 since 2005, including 2016’s duo recording with Rob Mazurek on Rogue Art). “…
Suite For Max Brown
Deluxe tip-on Stoughton jacket plus insert sheet with self-portrait photo and credits, IARC obi strip and dome-patterned inner-sleeve. The label behind Angel Bat Dawit’s amazing debut present a glorious side from persistent jazz innovator Jeff Parker (Tortoise), melding deeply soulful charm with naturally explorative leanings operating at similarly loose but focussed levels of intuition and dextrous freedom across his swirling ‘Suite For Max Brown’, but with plusher recording and production valu…
Max Brown, Pt. 1
Tortoise mainman Jeff Parker throws down the lissom, balmy jazz-fusion of ‘Max Brown’, the final track of his ‘Suite For Max Brown’ album as a tease for the promising full LP “I’m always looking for ways to be surprised,” says composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Parker as he explains the process, and the thinking, behind his new album, Suite for Max Brown, released via a new partnership between the Chicago–based label International Anthem and Nonesuch Records. “If I sit down at the piano or…
The Underflow
An übertrio drawn from distinct parts of the creative music spectrum, The Underflow was recorded during a sizzling two-night stand in May 2019. In a series of duets and trios, guitarist David Grubbs, saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, and trumpeter Rob Mazurek met headlong for the first time, converging not only their acoustic and electric instruments, but at times submerging themselves in a tangle of electronics, then emerging into shamanic bell-shaking chant or chest-rattling howl. Ranging from extr…
Desert Encrypts Vol. 1
Desert Encrypts Vol. 1, is a two-part suite based on observations from the desert in and around Marfa, TX. It also explores Rob Mazurek's ongoing fascination with social, psychological, and physiological structures, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. The composition includes written music and graphic scores for improvisation.For Desert Encrypts Vol. 1 Mazurek has put together an awe-inspiring new ensemble featuring Kris Davis on piano, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass and Chad Taylor on drums…
Psychotropic Electric Eel Dreams IV
In Spring of 2017, Experimental Sound Studio (ess.org) presented Psychotropic Electric Eel Dream IV, a four-channel sound composition for the ESS Florasonic sound installation series at Lincoln Park Conservatory, Chicago. The installation was in conjunction with Rob Mazurek's solo exhibition The Shaping Light at ESS's Audible Gallery.What you hear in the Fern Room is Psychotropic Electric Eel Dream IV by composer, musician, and visual artist, Rob Mazurek. The sounds in this composition were gene…
Love Waves Ecstatic Charge
Love Waves Ecstatic Charge uses visual material to construct sonic architecture. The visuals are one hundred and six still images taken from an experimental video which was initially shot when Rob Mazurek was in residency at Abbaye Royal de Fontevraud, France, 2005. Upon his return from the residency he discovered the camera broken and barely operational other than the fact of being able to extract frame by frame 106 distorted still images and fragmented skipping sound that would on occasion bur…
Rome
To date, celebrated Chicago musician Rob Mazurek’s solo endeavors have focused on his modular synthesizer and keyboard musings. On “Rome,” Mazurek’s sensitivity on cornet is at the fore, but we also find him using various electronics, and seated at a piano. Here the presence of the piano is expanded. He plays it conventionally, with preparation, with direct manipulation of the piano’s interior, and as a resonator for his cornet to create ethereal, otherworldly overtones. “Rome” was recorded and …
Mother Ode
2014 release. In July 2013, a few months after the passing of his mother, cornetist Rob Mazurekperformed solo at the Corbett Vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago. Mazurek is one of the highest profile figures in contemporary creative music, leading bands like the Exploding Star Orchestra, Skull Sessions Octet, and Starlicker. On this occasion, he brought a box filled with various implements -- his cornet, naturally, but flutes, bells, books, maracas, apples, and little electronics. This box became an …
Chants and Corners
Electro-Acoustic Composer, Cornetist Rob Mazurek continues to focus on the Brazilian side of his musical production, and that’s good news. Even better when we notice that “Chants and Corners” is something else than a new São Paulo Underground enterprise – some of the contributors are the same, but the project has another confection and this signifies that it’s multiplying in different perspectives, like the flowers of a plant. Playing a modular synth, a sampler and a piano besides his cornet, Ma…
Get Dressed
Lead single from Jeff Parker's forthcoming full-length International Anthem release The New Breed. Released digitally and on limited 7" phonograph flexi disc with gold foil titles and glossy photo print of Ernie Parker and friends.
Jeff Parker is an American jazz and rock guitarist based in Los Angeles. Parker is best known as an experimental musician, working with avant-garde electronic, rock, and improvisational groups. Parker currently plays guitar in the post-rock group Tortoise and also was…
Skull Sessions
Mazurek finds a challenge irresistible, and this is one of his most exciting projects" – The Wire
Skull Sessions combines two of Rob's groups: Sao Paulo Underground and Starlicker with additional personnel. The band is an international cast of masters, including drummer John Herndon (of Tortoise), vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and flutist Nicole Mitchell, (both DownBeat poll winners on their respective instruments), Guilherme Granado on keyboards and electronics, Carlos Issa on guitar and …
Galactic Parables: Volume 1
Composer, cornetist, electronic & acoustic sound specialist and musical director Rob Mazurek leads his largest regular ensemble, the Exploding Star Orchestra through one of his most ambitious recordings. While Galactic Parables: Volume 1 is a self-contained cosmos, marked by colliding melodic lines and startlingly beautiful passages, as the title indicates, it’s part of a larger work. Ever since Exploding Star Orchestra’s debut recording, Mazurek has been gradually building an epic science ficti…
Return The Tides: Ascension Suite And Holy Ghost
"I have always thought of the idea of passing as a beautiful thing, in which the soul or life force of the individual is somehow transferred to the immensity and brilliance of the entirety. The idea of Heaven and Hell (and everything inbetween) has always been a hallmark within the limited spectrum of what we humans can come up with and the idea of God or Gods has, for some, been an interesting way of putting a life and circumstances into some kind of mysterious belief system that can at times b…
Alternate Moon Cycles
The first half of the decade has seen cornet virtuoso and composer Rob Mazurek through significant achievements and personal losses, often linked inextricably through his creative processes. In and around the passing of his mentor and colleague, the trumpeter Bill Dixon in 2010 and his mother in 2013, Mazurek has found inspirations that are unique even for an innovator of his caliber. Mazurek and Dixon worked closely in achieving a deeper understanding of the pure tone of the trumpet (or cornet,…
Objects In Mirror Are Closer Then They Appear
"Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" starts from field recording session made by Attilio Novellino and Saverio Rosi in August of 2013 at the woolen mill “Lanificio Leo”, the oldest textile factory active in Calabria, founded in 1873 in Soveria Mannelli (Cz), currently one of the most signifcant cases of company-museum in Italy and winner of Guggenheim Management Culture Prize in 2011.The sounds produced by machines from the late 19th century, with their distinctive timbres and unusua…
A Way A Land Of Life
Bassist Jason Ajemian composed these 8 works performed with the Chicago/NY band of Tony Malaby on tenor sax, Rob Mazurek on cornet & electronics, and Chad Taylor on drums, a dynamic set of music that varies through a spectrum of styles while staying true to its jazz roots."Jason Ajemian can always be counted on to offer up way more than just the usual set of avant and improvised music – and as with some of his other recent albums, this set shows a range of imagination that just seems to be…